How strong are they? Do you wanna be inside one when the micrometeorite hits (not to mention the screwdriver that is traveling at several thousand miles per hour)

spacejunk... hmmm...

POP!! PSSSSSSSSSSSSSShhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

"Oh my God! There's been a hull puncture!! We're losing our pressure fast! We have to get to the airlock before we get trapped...."

"Aw, ****!!!! The airlock's deflated!"

"That's okay, I've got my pocketknife. We can just cut our way out!"

***

Seriously, though. I wouldn't care to be inside a McDonald's Super-Sized mylar birthday balloon (although you can make people laugh when you breathe helium because you can talk funny). The only way it'd really work is if there was a rigid armor-plating slapped on the outer layer, which then negates the entire advantage of having an inflatable habitat.

No thanks, I'll stick with my new fandangled 0g super-light and super-strong alloys.

Well an Inflatable space structure wouldn't made out of thin matterials it would made out of bullet proof matterials inculding Kevlar. It also can be made self sealing. Of course there is no reason why after inflating your structure you couldn't cover it with rigid armor-plating if you chose.

I fail to see why covering it with armor would cause it to lose the reason for making it inflatable. The reason for makeing it inflatable is for quick and easy deployment of a very large volume. Plateing it with armor wouldn't reduce the interior volume. Add to that armor plateing could be made in a way that it is easily replaced incase of damage.

Well an Inflatable space structure wouldn't made out of thin matterials it would made out of bullet proof matterials inculding Kevlar. It also can be made self sealing. Of course there is no reason why after inflating your structure you couldn't cover it with rigid armor-plating if you chose.

I fail to see why covering it with armor would cause it to lose the reason for making it inflatable. The reason for makeing it inflatable is for quick and easy deployment of a very large volume. Plateing it with armor wouldn't reduce the interior volume. Add to that armor plateing could be made in a way that it is easily replaced incase of damage.

Nobody cares about "quick and easy deployment". Speed isn't the issue: people will pay you for the opportunity to work in space, if you market it right (at least for the first few years). What matters is weight. The idea is that you don't have to haul up a large, massive superstructure; instead, you take a small, light balloon to which you connect your can of compressed air and inflate. Although the inflateable itself would still be light and small, the armor plating would be a large massive superstructure that goes on the outside.

I hadn't considered the self-sealing angle; I'd forgotten about that. And Kevlar won't do you any good: bullet-proof fabrics are designed to withstand impacts at about 1,000 m/h. In orbit, you're looking at maximal impact speeds of over 25,000 m/h -- there's not many of those, but you only need one to total your hotel. Nothing short of heavy metal plating can really withstand that.

There is no reason why inflatables would be less safe from orbital debris impacts - in fact the evidence says the opposite - NASA's TransHab work suggested that it could actually be much safer than the rigid metal shells of current space station components. According to some sources the TransHab module would have been *four* times more impact resistant, with a surface thickness of 1.5 feet. (!)

Having a soft surface ("soft" being very relative) can be beneficial to resist impacts, since the impact energy will be transferred over a larger surface area.

..."TransHab also provides greater protection against space debris than metal! Suspend disbelief for a minute and consider the facts. The skin is over a foot thick and made of an ingenious series of almost 24 layers. Starting from the outside, tightly woven white Beta cloth protects TransHab from erosion from the 'sand-blast' effect of atomic oxygen. It's the same cloth which lines the inside of the Shuttle payload bay. Insulation is then provided by blankets and Mylar, which is on the outside of all Space Station modules. Next comes debris protection, consisting of multiple layers of an incredibly durable material called Nextel, between layers of open cell foam. Any particle aimed at the walls would 'shatter' as it hits, causing it to lose energy as it penetrates deeper into the layers. The shell also contains a 'restraint layer' of an incredibly tough bullet-proof woven material called Kevlar, which holds the shape of the module, with air held in pressure bladders made of an air-tight material layered with Kevlar. The inside wall is made of fire-proof Nomex cloth, which protects the bladders from scuffs or scratches. Even if space debris did manage to penetrate the TransHab wall, it's interesting to note that the module would not 'burst' like a balloon. It would leak, but not pop. The reason for this is that the pressure difference between the interior of TransHab and space is only about 10 lbs per square inch. ..."

I definately believe that inflatables are the clear way to go for space/lunar/mars habitats, for the near future at least.

When has there ever been any sort of space habitat or vehicle that had any shielding a foot thick? At least as far as micrometeorite shielding anyway. I'm sure that many have had a foot of styrofoam thermal insulation but I really doubt that will help at all in any sort of debris collision.

From what I've read over the years I think Lars is right, the inflatable habitat materials are much safer than the aluminum cans the ISS is made out of.

Because I am often thinking of carbon-nanotubes because of Bradley C. Edwards' results: Why not making future (10 years) shields against orbital debris by some walls made of these nanotubes? Aren't they be able to resist the debris? From Edwards' results I conclude, they are. And I suppose they may be a good material for the inflatable habs too. The tubes have to be tested - why not do that by using them as shileds or parts of inflatables?

I'm all for the inflatables. There was a thread on this several months ago re: lunar/martian bases.

Vectran is definitely what they're talking about.

Impacts aren't the major concern at this point. Radiation is. They are talking about having to hang 'bags of water' around the interior of the structure to absorb most of the incoming radiation. metal's main advantage is radiation dispersal.

If it is inflatable why not inflat it with water instead of air? I mean of course the inside is inflated with air, but how about make the whole thing made of "cells" each filled with water? (yes of course it would be made of cells anyway.)

If each cell was filled with water could that be used to make them self sealing because the water would freeze as the temperature lowered from being exposed to space?

Concerning shields or protections against radiation there is a detection the astronomers recently made by observation as well as by calculations.

1.They detected a magnetic shield at Venus - but Venus does not have any magnetic field.

2.They calculated a model to find out what will happen when our planet will loose its magnetic field within the next 1500 years - result: the solar wind will cause a magnetic field in the atmosphere in high altitude and the life remains protected against the solar wind.

Conclusion: Venus is protected by an atmospheric magnetic shield caused by the solar wind.

Because of these findings a few weeks ago I have sent an e-mail to Peter Kokh (Lunar Reclamation Society) because he had been asking for electromagnetic shielding in his article "Living off the ice of Europe" and I posted two threads at the fore of the german section of the Mars Society.

What about providing two walls in habitats as well as in spacecrafts and filling the space between the two walls by gases or fluidables that will be magnetized by solar wind or by radiation? Gases are much lighter than metals.